Anderson Canyon

“Everything unusual, be it said, originates at Anderson Creek. Because of the artists most likely. If a stray cow is mysteriously killed, someone from Anderson Creek most likely did the job. If a passing motorist kills a deer on the highway, he always brings it to some poor artist at Anderson Creek, never to Mr. Brown or Mr. Roosevelt.” Page 74

In Real Life:

Henry Miller has some hilarious recollections of Anderson Creek in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch. It was an artist community out on a bluff overlooking the ocean where the actual Anderson Creek comes out of the mountains and meets the sea. The shack was one of those built for the convicts who were brought in to build Highway 1. When the road project was completed and the convicts moved on, the artists moved in and claimed the bluff as their own, creating a bohemian community. Miller was part of the community for about a year starting in January 1946. Today the property is a beautiful private home with a name – Anderson Canyon. And one of the convict shacks is still there on the property. The owner preserved it. Crazily, it’s the exact shack Miller lived in. And even crazier, the property is a vacation rental! It’s very expensive, only sleeps six, but you can book it and stay there and really feel what it might have been like to be one of those artists out at Anderson Creek who were blamed for everything unusual that happened. However, if you don’t rent it, you won’t see much because it’s private property.

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Rush of Reality

It's a crazy kind of rush that pushes me to seek out and find the settings of the books I read. The words create an image in my mind but that's not enough. I want to see it in real life. And when I do, when I arrive at a place - a town, a street, a beach - there is a moment, an adjustment, while I reconcile what's in my imagination to what’s actually right there in front of me. It's mindscape meets landscape. It's a rush. I call it the rush of reality. More

Setting

|ˈsetiNG|noun
1 the place or type of surroundings where something is positioned or where an event takes place: cozy waterfront cottage in a peaceful country setting.
• the place and time at which a play, novel, or film is represented as happening: short stories with a contemporary setting.